(Nimue)
I’ve come to the conclusion this year that I need to challenge myself round the issue of double standards. It’s something I’m seeing as increasingly problematic, and that I need to change. I’ve a long history of being prone to having double standards, and that needs to stop.
If there’s one rule for one person, and a different rule for someone else, there’s not a lot of scope for fairness and justice.
What I’ve been working with are thought forms like ‘everyone is doing their best’ and ‘if I can fix things then it’s on me to fix things’. What I ask of myself is not what I ask of other people. I think I need to put a lot less pressure on myself, and to hold other people to higher standards.
I want to believe the best of everyone. I get very uncomfortable when that thought is hard to hold. I want to believe that everyone is doing their best – limited by resources, personal struggles etc etc. We’re all doing our best – that seems like a kind and helpful position to hold. Where it falls down is when there’s every reason to think a person could do better and just can’t be bothered or doesn’t see the point. I’m exploring the implications of being a bit less accepting and a bit more willing to hold people to account.
Acceptance is a path that in the short term reduces conflict. It tends to reduce other people’s discomfort at my own expense. It can be a way of supporting and enabling problematic behaviour, and it’s that last element that has me looking hard at my own choices right now. If I let things go, if I make all the problems my problems, and I don’t hold people to the same standards as I hold myself, what am I allowing?
I’ve been thing a lot about my own experiences of other people’s double standards over the years, and how that’s impacted on me. If something matters when it affects someone else, but it doesn’t matter when it’s me being affected, that’s felt really dehumanising. When other people’s mistakes have been forgivable, but mine have not, that’s been painful. I’ve internalised too much of that. The double standards have informed my sense of self worth. It’s a lot to square up to.
I can do better than this. I’m not going to demand supernatural levels of perfection of myself. I’m giving myself permission to be more human, and more whole and from here I’m going to stop saying ‘everyone is doing their best’ to myself when someone hurts me.
Druid Life 
Good. xx
This post gives the impression of wrestling, and I resonated with that as I feel I have been wrestling with holding people to account as well.
Holding people to “account” is something I think many people subconsciously conflate with punishment/retribution/justice, and as a consequence I believe people avoid it because we think “Who am I to judge?” or “I don’t want to have to be the ‘bad guy’ and be responsible for punishing this person”. Considering the actual word “account”, though, it deals more in description, describing what has happened in a way intended to enable effective decision-making.
We each have our own account of a situation, and these accounts are never the entire picture, like the Buddhist parable of blind people defining what an elephant is by only the part they can sense. Sharing our account does not necessarily mean making a value judgement on that person; for example “You are a jerk for saying that to me”, making an arguable value judgement about the person based on our response to an action, is very different from “When you said that, I felt angry”, a statement that is simply a description based on your account of the situation.
“Holding” people to account also sometimes seems to be equated with changing another person’s actions, and we ultimately do not have the power to do that. They have the power to choose. The holding part, as I understand it, is more like saying “When you did this, I felt angry, telling me my sense of boundaries was violated in some way. It is okay to feel scared and express feeling scared, but it is not okay to make unkind, unhelpful comments in response to fear. I will immediately disengage from any conversation where that is taking place.” Nothing in that statement denies the agency of the other person, only makes clear what happened, what the boundaries are, and what action will be taken in response.
Thank you for publishing this thought-provoking post! I hope you will feel strengthened within yourself with this wrestling.
Thank you so much for sharing this, I’ve found that really helpful this morning. I think that’s a crucial thing – wanting people to be accountable, not wanting to punish anyone. Also needing to be able to say ‘this is harmful to me’ and have that matter.
“Best” is a value word.
I prefer something more neutral.
They are doing what they are doing.
Probably out of ignorance.
I’m currently learning about Marsha Linehan’s “radical acceptance” – which absolutely does NOT mean automatic approval.
I like that a lot, it’s a far more helpful approach, and I’m interested in this idea of radical acceptance without automatic approval.
The other DBT skills are also really interesting.
They are tied together by the “dialectic” of living life with change AND acceptance. It’s very practical and action oriented. I love that. The other thing I’m looking into is IFS / “parts”, we are no only one “personality” but more like a choir that we can learn to train and conduct in more harmonious ways 🫂🫂🫂
I’ve been thinking of myself in a more collective way for a while, not least because of all the bacteria etc in the mix.
Radical acceptance is a life saver! It’s part of Dialectical Behavior Therapy. I am practising it and finding it incredibly valuable for relationships.
I shall investigate, thank you!
If you need book recommendations Inhave quite the reading list by now 🤣
I wandered a few websites this morning, I think there are some useful prompts here for how I c rethink – I’m too prone to acceptance, sometimes. these are better terms on which to do it.
Actually, with that way Double Standards tend to Work as you describe reminds me of the Famous Scene in Classic War Movie ‘Platoon’, there is this one Black Soldier who kept saying about the Double Standards of their Platoon, “It’s Politics Man, Its Politics”.